


Gave Me A Name, Gave Me Power

by ix_tab



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Trauma Survival, but aside from that no spoilers, post ep 26, this is a caleb focused piece, undertones of brief suicidal and/or self harm ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-08-09 12:51:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16450301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ix_tab/pseuds/ix_tab
Summary: What a blessing, what an unbelievable burden to be given the opportunity to love anything outside of magic, thinks Caleb Widogast.





	Gave Me A Name, Gave Me Power

**Author's Note:**

> Very much from Caleb's pov, so not the kindest view of my dude, who I, the writer personally think is the bee's knees.
> 
> Title from Murder By Death's song "Chasing Ghosts"

There's a joy, a love in magic, fierce and horrible and Caleb is pretty sure he doesn't deserve to feel it. But he does. Not just with his old friend, constant companion, nemesis, not just with fire magic, but all arcane arts.

Magic feels like the world smells after a lightning strike. If ozone had a tangible body, it would be magic, strung through the weft and weave of the planes, known and otherwise. Magic is life and death, poison and cleansing, sweet fire and the sting of ice. Magic is hurting, magic is healing.

A funny old thing, healing. A magic he has never attempted. But he thinks that, the internal essence of the body, the mind, the spirit, unknowable in its entirety, he thinks that he’s starting to ‘heal’ something.

He hates it. Resents it. He looks across the dull glowing embers of the campfire at his sleeping companions, people he would burn for, and loathes them all for loving him, for his own love for them.

***

 

It had been simple, just he and Nott. A focus. But even that was a lie. He had told himself, ‘oh its just mutual survival, we are using each other for support’ and then one little hamlet later they'd fled, his hand in a terribly made splint.

He'd punched a man in the face for idly talking about goblins being vermin, a few tables over from them in the inn. No one had even picked up on what Nott was, it was just. 

It happened, and he'd broken a finger with his sloppy, untrained punch, bruising knuckles on teeth.

Nott had dragged him out and fussed over him, in an alley, wrapping some of her bandages around his hand ineffectually. She'd tied a decent bow, though.

And through that night, away from the warm, dry bed and food they'd paid for, Caleb knew the answer to why he'd struck a man, was love. 

He'd had to sit with that for a while, astounded at his own audacity. What right did he have to feel love? Someone like him? And Nott, kind, nervous, vicious little Nott who had been hurt so badly by others...wouldn't he ruin her by whatever vile nature his affection, attention brought?

He hadn't been able to stop loving her, she was too strong. So much stronger than him. He had no defence against her love for him, either. It was Caleb and Nott, against the world and they became their own, broken and repairing self contained unit.

So maybe even with only two people, love had begun to heal him. A thought he wishes he could kill.

****

 

There are innumerable forms of love, Caleb knows. He speaks a handful of languages, and with a bright sting of magic, can comprehend so many more, but there aren't enough words anywhere to properly describe it all.

This group of people, he loves them. Loves them so much, he's afraid of what they could do to him. Worse, what he could do to them.

Worst of all, what he would do for them.

What would they think, if they all knew about him? He knows them all well enough now to know it wouldn't be simple disgust.

It should be that, but they love him too much. There would be pity, sorrow, anger towards him and for him. He gags on the thought that there might be understanding.

Sympathy he could stomach, even if he knows he doesn't deserve it.

But empathy? No. He couldn't bear it. None of them deserve to have been through anything like he has.

 

He tries to ignore the little voice in his head, a lilting discordant mishmash of all their voices that says  _ maybe you didn't deserve it either. _

***

 

One thing that's related to healing, but that he is going to try to keep secret is the way unconsciousness feels. It feels right, to sleep away into the dark, body broken and bleeding.

The fight dulls and disappears around him, and his mind splinters, becomes blessedly silent.

 

_ Is this what you felt, Mollymauk?  _ he thinks, and hopes not. It’s so quiet here. Molly is owed an eternity of music and bright lights, laughter and wine. This is too cold, too still for his sure footed, wide smiling friend.

_ Mother, Father, did you feel this?  _ he hopes, fragmented as he is. He can't delude himself, not even dying, splayed out on the battlefield. His parents felt searing heat before their death. 

 

They did not have the time to savour the peace, to learn to love this dark, quiet place, frozen between breaths, unintentional, bodily autonomous reactions trying to pull him back.

Every time he is brought back from the brink, gasping wet, iron tang thick in his throat, limbs weak, heart hammering, he knows it’s love. It’s love that pours the potion down his slack throat, and its love that pushes divine, sacred light to sink deep under his skin to knit him back together.

They would cry, he is pretty sure if he told them about loving the dark and the depths, so he learns to just take it, lean into the part of him that wants to survive.

That part has been growing stronger, despite his misgivings, and sometimes, his efforts. 

How terrible, to be loved enough to want more than to simply exist, or to just be a conduit for magic.

***

 

When he found clarity again, all those years under the fog, he’d found love in simplicity. In choice. It was astounding, honestly, how his mind could be aflame with his crimes, his sin, but he could still find something to be happy about.

He fell in love with the word ‘No.’ No, I will not wash my clothes, I will not be sanitised. I choose to be this way, because this is the way I feel. No, I will not pay for this, I will take because they took everything from me. 

No. No, I won’t stop looking for the answer I feel could be out there. No, I don’t care if it rips the skies asunder and whatever soul exists within me is eaten up as fuel.

He said no to free food when offered by charitable souls at first, but then would steal it later. His choice, when to eat and when to not. 

It had taken being beaten by guards more then once, and the pains of hunger leaving him too weak to walk to soften the no. He couldn’t love himself enough to care, but if he didn’t survive, the world would stay the same, and that seemed intolerable.

“Cut your nose off, to spite your face,” an older, sadder seeming guard said, after Caleb had been pushed from a tavern, judged to be a vagrant. The guard had noticed his well hidden beginning of a collection of spell books, obviously knowledgeable enough in magic to understand that Caleb could do something, anything, if he wanted.

“Yes! And it’s my choice,” Caleb had said, grinning through his split lip. The guard shook her head, passed him a handkerchief that had a couple of silver in the centre. Caleb had startled, and she shrugged. 

“Leave town soon, it’s not a kind place here for people certain townsfolk judge as ‘undesirable’ “ she said. Caleb had stared at the silver and then at her retreating back. She’d been stern but friendly, preventing a drunkard from taking another swing at him when he’d been shoved outside. 

Maternal, almost. A motherly sort of love, bossy but concerned. Mindlessly he put the coin in his pouch and then stared at the cloth. It had a little purple flower embroidered in the corner, a little clumsily. A childish hand had been behind the sewing. 

 

He’d hidden behind a house out of the way, shoved the handkerchief into his mouth and screamed, muffled until his throat was raw.

***

 

Love is powerful, thinks Caleb, as he stares across at Yasha, her eyes turned upwards to the skies. Maybe she is communing with the god who loves her. 

After...after Molly, none of them have been keen on taking solitary watches, and even in this safe little nook carved out of a mountain, they couldn’t take chances.

Love keeps winding them together, closer and closer. He wants to leave all the time, he never wants to be apart from them. He thinks about leaving, how all of them would be better off.

But he would never see Fjord’s handsome face crease with laughter again, amused despite himself as Beau practised her friendly smile. And Beauregard, he wouldn’t be near her rough, awkward attempts at connection.

He wouldn’t see Jester giggle as she braided a sleeping Caduceus’ and Yasha’s hair together, or see Yasha open her mismatched eyes and carefully undo the braid after Jester had gone off to write her account.

He wouldn’t hear Caduceus’ sonorous tones as he pondered something new. And almost everything was new to him, so it had become a welcome, dear background of their life together.

He wouldn’t see Nott smile with goblin glee at this group of people who looked at her, not with disgust, or violence in their eyes, but with affection. Wouldn’t see them celebrate her victories, or commiserate her failures.

He wouldn’t see Mollymauk’s hand on their backs, the memory of his awful cheap incense drifting past now and then. 

He knows, he’s being greedy. He knows that he shouldn’t be allowed to be happy. How could anyone like him get that? But no matter that, he is. 

And even through the bleak, the grey, the sick, sharp sorrow and hate running through his core, for some reason he has been granted so much love, to give, to receive.

If the world is not fair, then this is surely proof, but sometimes, all that is left in him is gratitude for the love. And that may be a kind of arcane miracle that has yet to be named. 

Maybe love is magic too.


End file.
